Andrew Lau’s “Infernal Affairs” trilogy became the best-known import in the early 2000s from the storied Hong Kong film industry, supplying Martin Scorsese with material for his Academy Award-winning film “The Departed.” But while Mr. Lau’s latest, “Revenge of the Green Dragons,” leaps forth with a flurry of montage, attitude and action, it loses its way as a drama.

This film — a thriller directed with Andrew Loo and set in Queens during the Chinese immigration wave of the 1980s — begins by sketching out the hungry desperation of the era, and how Chinese gangs took hold of two schoolmates, Sonny and Steven, and never let go. Senseless violence and get-ahead cynicism abound, as the story ratchets forward to track the hotheaded Steven and the slightly more prudent Sonny through Green Dragons intrigue, shootings and blowbacks. Drugs, a human trafficker and unconvincing romance fuel the mayhem.

Inspired by a 1992 article in The New Yorker, “Revenge” gets a certain vigor out of these prideful battles for power and respect in a world where only the murders of whites seem to matter. Yet the busy plotting shoves past the characters, and Justin Chon as Sonny, and Kevin Wu as Steven, can’t keep up. A smuggler’s speech about America’s basis in hatred won’t find many buyers, nor will a frozen-faced Ray Liotta referentially cast as a detective benefiting from the efforts of a Chinese-American colleague (Jin Auyeung).